Agrarian Land Reform In Mexico
Before the 1910 Mexican Revolution that overthrew Porfirio Díaz, most of the land was owned by a single elite ruling class. Legally there was no slavery or serfdom; however, those with heavy debts, Indian wage workers, or peasants, were essentially debt-slaves to the landowners. A small percentage of rich landowners owned most of the country's farm land. With so many people brutally suppressed, revolts and revolution were common in Mexico. To relieve the Mexican peasant's plight and stabilize the country, various leaders tried different types of agrarian land reform.
During the first five years of agrarian reform, very few hectares were evenly distributed. Land reform attempts by past leaders and governments proved futile, as the revolution from 1910-1920 had been a battle of serfdom, capitalism, and industrial ownership. Fixing the Agrarian problem was a question of education, methods, and creating new social relationships through co-operative effort and government assistance. Initially the agrarian reform led to the development of many ejidos for communal land use, while parceled ejidos emerged in the later years.
Read more about Agrarian Land Reform In Mexico: 1856 Lerdo Law, Land Reform From 1910 To 1934, Cardenista Land Reform 1934 To 1940, Step Back 1940 To 1970, 1970 and Statization, Land Reform From 1991 To Present, Effects of Land Reform
Famous quotes containing the words land, reform and/or mexico:
“Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)